Albert Woodfox

Court Rules Against Angola 3à ‚¬ ²s Albert Woodfox: No End in Sight to 38 Years in SolitaryConfinement

It's been nearly two years since a federal district court judge in Baton Rouge overturned Woodfox's conviction for the 1972 murder of a guard at Louisiana's Angola prison. Judge James Brady's 2008 ruling, which ordered the state to retry Woodfoxor release him,brought new hope tothe 63-year-oldWoodfox, who has been in Angolaoriginally forarmedrobberysince he was 24. A member of the group known as the Angola 3, Woodfoxhas always contended thathe was effectivelyframed for the guard's murderand then throwninto permanent lockdownbecause of his involvement with the Black Panther Party, which was organizing against conditions in what was then known as the "bloodiest prison in the South."

Without drawing any conclusions about Woodfox'sguilt or innocence, Judge Brady of the Federal District Court, Middle District of Louisiana, concluded that Woodfoxhad not received a fairtrial in1998 (at what was itselfa replacement for a faulty 1973 trial). The main grounds for overturning Woodfox'sconviction were ineffective assistance of counsel, which allowed questionableevidence and irregular practices to stand without challenge. Woodfoxhad argued that better lawyers couldhave shown thathis conviction was quite literally bought by the state, which based its case on jailhouse informants who were rewarded for their testimony. (Woodfox's case was described in full in this2009 article for Mother Jones.)

Judge Bradyagreed, and in July 2008 he granted Woodfox'sPetition for Writ of Habeas Corpus, ordering that his conviction and life sentence be "reversed and vacated." But some of the most powerful figures in the Louisianajustice system were committed to keeping Woodfox in prison and in lockdown. After his conviction was overturned,Attorney General James "Buddy" Caldwell declared, "We will appeal this decision to the 5th Circuit [Court of Appeals]. If the ruling is upheld there I will not stop and we will take this case as high as we have to. I will retry this case myself"I oppose letting him out with every fiber of my being because this is a very dangerous man."

Caldwellput his case before the federal Fifth Circuit in March 2009and in yesterday's decision, he prevailed. In a 2-1 decision,a panel of three federal appellate judges ruled that Judge Brady had erred in overturningWallace's conviction. Their decision is not only a crushing blow for Woodfox, butalso a manifestation of how far the rights of the accusedhave fallen inrecent decades.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals once hada reputation as one of the finest appellate courts in the land. In the 1960s, a small group of Fifth Circuit judges--mostly Southern-bred moderate Republicans--was known for advancing civil rights and especially school desegregation. But today the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi, is seen as among the most ideologically conservative of the federal appeals courts. It is notable for its overburdened docket and for its hostility to appeals from defendants in capital cases, including claims based on faulty prosecution and suppressed evidence. The court has even been reprimanded by the U.S. Supreme Court, itself is no friend to death row inmates: In June 2004, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that the Fifth Circuit was "paying lip service to principles" of appellate law in handing down death penalty rulings.

In addition, the decision in Woodfox'scase shows the crippling effect on prisoners' rights of the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA)which was passed under Bill Clinton in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing. That legislation has become the bane of anti-death penalty lawyers and activists, and of thousands of other prisoners seeking to challenge their convictionsa pursuit which AEDPA now renders nearly impossible.

As the Fifth Circuit noted in its ruling, "The AEDPA requires that federal courts'defer to a state court's adjudication of a claim'" unless the state court decision ran --contrary to"clearly establishedFederal law, as determined by the Supreme Court,'" or was""based on anunreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in theState court proceeding.'"And as the judges pointed out,"An unreasonable application of federal law is different from an incorrect or erroneous application of the law."

In other words, the state courts could be wrong, they just couldn't be so far out as to beundeniably "unreasonable." And in the end, theFifth Circuit judges agreed with the State's argument that in the case at hand,"the district court failed to apply the AEDPA'sheightened deferential standard of review to Woodfox's ineffective assistanceclaims."Woodfox's conviction may have been wrong, butit was not, in the eyes of the Fifth Circuit, "unreasonable"so there will be no new trial for him.This is how justice works in post-AEDPA America.

For Woodfox, this means that his time in prisonstretches before him with noobvious end in sight. His lawyers have promised to return to his case with new evidence, but that could take years, and the outcome might still be the same. In the meantime, Woodfox and fellow Angola 3 members Herman Wallace and Robert King have mounted a constitutional challenge to their solitary confinement, which may come to trial before the end of this year. (Wallace was Woodfox's co-defendent in the guard's murder, and has also been in solitary for 38 years. King, sentenced to life for another prison killing,had his murder conviction overturned andwas released from Angola in February 2001 after 29 years in lockdown; he remains a plaintiff in this suit, which covers time he was in solitary.) That case, too, will eventually go before the Fifth Circuitand evena win would mean only a release from permanent lockdown, not from Angola.

Woodfox'srelease from solitary, as well as his criminal appeal, is vehemently opposed by Angola's warden, Burl Cain, who has likened the Black Panthers to the KKK, and is adamant that the aging Woodfoxis and always will be a menace to society by virtue of his political beliefs. He has said that Woodfox is "locked in time with that Black Panther revolutionary actions they were doing way back when"And from that, there's been no rehabilitation."